'New, in an old-school way'

Martin Boulton

NICK Cave & the Bad Seeds will release new album Push the Sky Away on February 15 next year, but fans can get a taste of the band's 15th album when opening track We No Who U R becomes available via download on December 3.

Coming four years after he recorded Dig Lazarus Dig!!! and eight years since the Bad Seed's 2 CD release Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, Push the Sky Away "just seems new, you know, but new in an old-school kind of way," according to Cave.

The Bad Seeds line-up has changed dramatically since forming in 1983, but Cave has again recorded with Warren Ellis (Dirty Three), Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey and Thomas Wydler with Conway Savage also providing vocals on the new album.

"I enter the studio with a handful of ideas ... it's the Bad Seeds that transform them into things of wonder," Cave says. "Ask anyone who has seen them at work. They are unlike any other band on earth for pure, instinctive inventiveness."